Catherine. His face was a dark blue that didn’t glow, so his features were obscured, almost as though he wore a mask.
They were on the Transit Bridge, which spanned Victoria Harbor from Hong Kong Island to Kowloon. Catherine was staying with Mariko for a few months, and Mariko’s parents believed that the girls were, at this moment, taking a night class in traditional dance. It wasn’t completely untrue.
“He’s quite handsome!” Mariko said privately, by yelling the words into Catherine’s ear canal.
“How can you tell?” Catherine screamed.
“I guess I can’t! But this could be your lucky night!”
This was the game they played, noticing boys who noticed them and pretending that something might happen. The truth was that Catherine, while enjoying herself immensely, couldn’t feel like anything but an observer in a place like this. It was pleasant to pretend she was just one of the vast crowd of revelers here on the second level of the Bridge, but despite the body paint, she was sober, had been trained as a Seeker, and did not actually fit in.
After recovering her family’s athame, she’d expected her parents to fall down on their knees in gratitude. They’d been grateful, of course, but when Catherine had told them what she wished to do with the athame, what she wished to become one day, they’d laughed at her. They hadn’t meant to be cruel—they’d laughed because they felt sorry for her. Her hopes were so ridiculous and out of reach that she was an object of pity to her own family. They didn’t care that the Middle Dread was unworthy of his position. They didn’t want Catherine gathering evidence to that effect or fantasizing about who might replace him. Even when she spoke of the immediate things she wanted to do as a Seeker (small acts in parts of the world where a little good would go a long way), they’d treated her like a dreamer. Her parents saw the athame as a key to family security only. Catherine hadn’t shared with them her new conviction that she should find the secret caves belonging to every Seeker house, as a first step to discovering where missing Seekers had gone.
Her older sister, Anna, had been jealous when Catherine brought home the fox athame. Eventually she’d accused Catherine of trying to diminish her older sister’s status in their parents’ eyes. And so Catherine had left.
She’d done one final act as a Seeker. She’d gone back to the cave under Mont Saint-Michel, alone and hurriedly, and she’d scoured the walls for any clues to the past and the present. She’d found the series of numbers cut into the rock—carvings she hadn’t had time to study with Mariko. The numbers added up to two hundred, and beside them were a series of marks almost like arrows. But Catherine was at a loss to understand what the numbers meant. The arrow shapes hinted that they were directions, but beginning where? Were they a measure of distance? Of time?
She’d left France without answers. She’d come to Hong Kong to leave her life as a Seeker behind, for a long while, at least. She would let Anna deal with her parents and their legacy.
Catherine yelped as something poked her near her spine. Enormous, sharp belt buckles were the rage in Hong Kong at the moment, and you had to be careful where you stood in places like this. She took a step to her right.
“May I speak to you?”
Catherine was startled. The young man with the face painted dark blue had worked his way through the crowd and was now next to her at the edge of the dance floor, his head close to her ear. Catherine glanced at Mariko, who was also watching the newcomer. Usually she and Mariko politely declined any such advances. Catherine still found the boys out in the world so different from herself that they seemed almost another species. And Mariko was living under her parents’ medieval dating rules. But something about this young man’s self-assurance struck a chord.
“All right,” she said to him, and Mariko arched an eyebrow so high, it was comical. “Where?”
The young man gestured toward a quieter area at the edge of the main room. Catherine moved with him, weaving through the crowd. She winked back at Mariko, letting her Japanese friend know that nothing had changed; she would talk to this person, and she’d be right back.
“Do I know you?” she asked, turning back to her companion and trying to study his painted